The objective of this paper is twofold: to carry out a multimodal analysis of an institutional video released by European Union, and to discuss an empirical activity of critical multimodal reading of the video as part of a continuing teacher education course at University of Campinas, Brazil.
Digital information and communication technologies have heavily impacted social and cultural life of our societies, in which ways of thinking, representing and communicating have been created and/or transformed. This has brought new dimensions for meaning-making, especially with regards to multimodality, which assumes an unprecedented importance. Upon this a fundamental question arises in terms of teaching and learning: What does it mean to be (critically) literate in the 21st century? In order to try to answer this question, the objective of this paper is twofold: firstly, based on the Social Semiotics theoretical-analytical approach (HALLIDAY, 1978; KRESS & VAN LEUWEN, 1996; LEMKE, 1998), it aims at carrying out a multimodal analysis of an institutional video released by European Union, which circulated worldwide on television channels and social networks on the Internet. In the second part, by taking into consideration the concepts of Multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996), Agency (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998), Critical Literacy (Cervetti, Pardales, Damico, 2001; Luke, 2004), New Literacies (Lankshear & Knobel 2007; 2008), Space of flows (Castells, 2010), Design (Cope & Kalantzis 2011) and Knowledge Processes (Cope & Kalantzis 2009; 2011), it aims at discussing an empirical activity of critical multimodal reading of the institutional video as part of a continuing teacher education course at University of Campinas, Brazil. The results show how the study of multimodality can contribute to rethink the meaning of literacy so as to deal with the multifaceted requirements of teaching and learning in the contemporary world.
